Boulder Coffee Shops blog

New shop in Denver serving Ozo roasts

bouldercoffee — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 18:23:44 +0000

Haven’t been yet, but just heard Ozo (the next Masters of the Universe) is now being served in a new shop in Denver called Yellow Feather (742 Santa Fe, Denver CO 80204).

Speaking of Ozo…. I don’t know, but is there a better shop in Boulder? I don’t think so. When they finally get downtown, they’re going to be killing it there. And it’s not like they need to prove themselves….they’re out by 55th St in nowheresville and absolutely crushing it. Every time I go (which is very often now) they’re totally slammed. If I had to pick one shop in Boulder that I’d bring with me on my travels to exotic rural U.S. locations with no real coffee available, I’d pick Ozo without a doubt.

I was there

bouldercoffee — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 16:55:26 +0000

It happened Wednesday morning. Maybe there were bars open all over town, but it was 9am and I was crunched for time (it was already into the second half!!) and I knew Amante Downtown would be showing the game. What I didn’t anticipate was that 100 other people would be seeking the same venue. That made it all the sweeter. When Donovan put in the 91st minute goal, the place erupted like we had just been saved from an incoming nuclear missile.

The Daily Camera (does any similarly over-educated community have a worse local paper?) was there to capture the moment and if you imagine really hard, you might see me in the photo. (I’m in the far back left, obscured by the light coming in the windows. Anonymity intact!! I think I can just barely make out my upraised arms. That was the most fun sports event I’ve been to in a long time.)

Tripping around Brooklyn

bouldercoffee — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 13:30:24 +0000

We were in Brooklyn for the past few days and with my coffee-obsessed family-in-law, there was always a run for decent coffee. Luckily for Brooklyn, the best roaster on the planet — Portland’s Stumptown — decided to bless the County of Kings with its presence a while ago. The upside is that Brooklyn now gets awesome coffee. The downside is they are only just waking up to what that means. So you can find some good shops selling great coffee, but you can also find shops using Stumptown but doing everything wrong. Very quick highlights and lowlights:

Apartment 138 (Smith St between Dean and Bergen in Cobble Hill). We got sucked in for breakfast on Saturday morning because of the pretty chalk signs outside, one of which was ornate and promised Stumptown goodness. Bad choice. Breakfast was …. alright I guess, but the coffee wasn’t and a mocha ordered was made with Nestle powdered hot chocolate mix. In there for an hour, we were the only patrons at breakfast for an entire hour — not a good sign for a city that likes brunch.

Cafe Pedlar (Court St @ Warren St). This has to be to one of the premier shops in the borough doing Stumptown. A group of 8 of us went in, coffees all around were spectacular. Not a place to work, and perhaps also not very comfortable for doing a social Sunday morning coffee sit for an hour or two (just a few tables and a bit of a stark feel inside), but like I said, they know how to use the espresso machine. And the pastries were good too.

Glass Shop (Classon Ave. between Sterling and St. John’s Pl in Prospect Heights). Shockingly good latte two days in a row. I didn’t recognize the beans, and was fearful when I saw them on the shelf — looked like an Italian import that had been roasted a couple of years ago. I was wrong. If I lived in Prospect Heights, I’d work in this shop (not sure if they have wifi – I left my computer at home). Downside is they don’t open until 8am. WTF?

On the food front, my favorite food all week was Taqueria de los Muertos on Washington Ave at St. Marks Ave in Prospect Heights. I went back again and again. If we had them here, the line would be around the corner all day. In Brooklyn the times I went, they were empty. Go figure.

Best home espresso maker ever

bouldercoffee — Sun, 09 May 2010 03:30:10 +0000

We’ve been using this beauty since it came as a gift from Santa in December. It’s made by Alessi. It’s on permanent display at MoMA in New York, it’s that awesome. It’s just about the most awesomest thing since …. well, it even beats sliced bread. We’ve been using Ozo’s Isabelle roast in it lately, but Conscious works great too.

Finding new ways to piss off customers all the time

bouldercoffee — Thu, 06 May 2010 17:20:18 +0000

New addition to Brewing Market on Baseline and Broadway: a sign at the register that practically yells at customers: Pick up an internet voucher before you pay!! No vouchers will be given after your purchase!!

Oh my fucking god. Chill the fuck out, BM.

Don’t be rude! Especially when….

bouldercoffee — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 23:06:50 +0000

Overseen at Brewing Market on 95th and Arapahoe: a guy in a wheelchair been sitting for a while, trying to pay his bills over the phone with various corporations. He’s been sitting for a half hour or so and gets his computer out and then finds that he needs the internet password voucher by which Brewing Market ensures that you can’t sponge off their internet. (Of course, other than Starbucks nobody around here does that, but Brewing Market is Brewing Market…..but that’s a different post.) So he asks for some help (he’s moved himself from his wheelchair to a regular chair, so can’t easily get to the counter) and another patron goes and gets a barista. Guy in wheelchair asks for the voucher and she says “You gotta buy something.” Not those exact words, but with exactly that level of snottiness. He says, “I did — it’s right here — I just didn’t pick up my voucher when I bought the coffee. I’ve just been sitting here trying to pay my bills.” And instead of dropping it and getting him the damn voucher, the barista asks him how he’s been paying his bills!!! As in, she’s questioning if he’s really been using the internet for his allotted 2 hours already! It was bizarrely rude and I took it as far more a function of how she’s been told by her boss to act than her own initiative. Wake up Brewing Market!! You’re not making any more money with your 2-hour policy and quite possibly, you’re losing some because of it. There’s a reason every other coffee shop in Boulder has free, unlimited wifi.

The rise of the 10 oz travel mug

bouldercoffee — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 22:59:24 +0000

The problem: clueless barista who doesn’t even drink his/her own coffee, has no concept of the proper milk:coffee proportions in most drinks. Evidence: shops that make cappuccinos and lattes exactly alike, and baristas that fill my 16 oz travel mug all the way to the top with milk, even after being explicitly asked to fill it only halfway. Even experienced baristas do this, and in the past month alone I’ve gotten this at The Cup and at the Goat (two shops that definitely know that too much milk covers the coffee….even the best can screw up sometimes…..then again, Ozo staff would never make this mistake).

The solution: the 10 oz travel mug. Imagine my geekedness level when my spouse brought me one home last week from Ozo. It’s got Ozo’s logo, it’s svelte, fits perfectly in my hand, and I immediately saw that BARISTAS CAN’T SCREW UP MY CAPPUCCINOS AND MOCHAS ANY MORE!!! I say I want two shots in that puppy, I’m getting two shots and there’s no room for too much milk.

How cool is the 10 oz travel mug? Even Seattle shops are all over it. I was just there two days ago and almost fell over when the shop I walked into on Phinney Ridge was selling a 10 oz mug (Herkimer Coffee, if you must know … awesome place). I’m sure it’s all over Portland too, and pretty soon it’s going to be all over Boulder. This is coffee culture. The real snooty sippers, the coffee hipsters, the caffeine intelligentsia, will all be carrying these puppies in short order.

Where is the tourney playing?

bouldercoffee — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 15:35:24 +0000

If you don’t know what we’re talking about, you need to get out of the bubble a little more often. It’s March Madness time! Without a doubt the greatest annual sporting event in the world.

In years past Amante and Saxy’s have pulled their hoity-toity heads out of their Euro asses and deigned to show the tourney on their TV’s. (Ok, only Amante has the Eurotrash ‘tude.) Will they again this year? Where else? Comment here or twit us @bldrcoffee.

From the comments….

bouldercoffee — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 18:11:25 +0000

Had to pull this one out and promote it:

We love Thai! And we adore his latte art — so much so that we commissioned him to make 6 lattes for us, each with different designs, so that we could photograph them and convert them into Twitter themes for Tweety Got Back!

Here are the results!
http://bit.ly/thailatte

(Perhaps @bldrcoffee could use a Thai-siganature-latte-art facelift on their Twitter page… *hint*)

[NB: that would require us to - like - engage with Twitter beyond the occasional text message. Highly unlikely.... ]

The Fix is a bike shop

bouldercoffee — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 18:06:15 +0000

And not really a coffee shop. In case you missed the news in a previous post, a new coffee shop opened out near 55th and Valmont. The Fix is a bike shop with a coffee shop. I finally had a few minutes and a bike issue, so I stopped by. Definitely go there to get your bike fixed, but it’s not a coffee shop destination as most people around Boulder (and anybody who reads this site) is used to. Just bare-bones coffee service with an espresso machine, very limited seating, an anti-work environment, and they’re serving Silver Canyon. Seriously. Wowsers. Not good. BUT, the bike dudes were super nice, and I look forward to going back for bike fixing or gear. But not for coffee.